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The ugly truth about owning a small business, and what we're doing about it...

Small business is the lifeblood of communities around the country. 

We all know a small business owner. 

It could be you, your partner, your mother, your brother, or the person you buy your morning coffee from. 

Small business owners start a business to be their own boss, pursue their passion, showcase their skills, and create their own lifestyle.

But, the reality is very different. 

It's long days, sleepless nights, non-existent weekends and endless financial admin for every sale.  

There's an invoice to send… 

A staff member to pay… 

An expense to be reconciled… 

Did you know the average small business spends over six hours a week on financial admin? 

That's a staggering 42 days every year.

I'm Michael, the CEO of Thriday.  

As a small business owner, I felt like a slave to the system.

I was frustrated about how much time and money was wasted managing bookkeepers and accountants with tools that only did half the job. 

We started Thriday to solve that problem, to simplify and automate financial admin for small businesses. 

We wanted everything a small business needs to manage their financial admin in one place, built-in, not tacked on.

I started my career leading technology teams at some of the largest banks in Australia and the UK. 

I also started my own small business Parkhound, which made it easy for people to book affordable parking spaces. 

I grew the business to a hundred thousand members by the time it was acquired in 2017. 

I know first-hand how complicated, time-consuming and frustrating managing your business finances can be. 

At Thriday, we've totally re-imagined how businesses can manage their money.  

We've created a platform that combines business transaction accounts, quoting, invoicing, bookkeeping, accounting, and tax, all in one place, to help small businesses automate their financial admin, save a massive amount of time and thrive in what they love doing. 

Why Thriday and why now? 

Like it or not, there are 3 fundamental requirements across every business: 

  1. Banking - Every business needs to send, receive and store money
  2. Accounting - Every business needs to know where its money is coming from and where it's going
  3. Tax - Every business needs to follow tax regulations and pay the right amount of tax every month, every quarter, and every year

Just looking at a list of financial admin tasks to manage those requirements is exhausting, here are just a few:  

  • Sending quotes 
  • Keeping receipts 
  • Chasing invoices 
  • Processing payroll 
  • Maintaining records 
  • Categorising expenses 
  • Calculating depreciation 
  • Reconciling transactions 
  • Maintaining an asset register 
  • Preparing your end-of-year tax 
  • Preparing business activity statements 
  • Creating and managing a chart of accounts 
  • Understanding rules and regulations so you can minimise your tax 

It's overly complex, unnecessarily complicated, and a massive time suck. So understandably, many businesses see these tasks as chores.  

Up until now, this is how we've all had to solve the problem of managing business finances: 

  • You hire an accountant who tells you to sign up for MYOB or Xero
  • You jump in to start using it, and the headache begins
  • Connect your bank account
  • Import your data
  • Create income and expense categories
  • The list goes on, too hard basket. I need help setting this up. (Xero even have a 2-hour hands-on workshop to learn how to set up your account)
  • So you hire a bookkeeper to set it up properly because that's just how it's done. 
  • You pay the bookkeeper for their time to sit down with you each week or month to keep the accounting platform up to date and organised for the accountant
  • You pay the accountant for the time it takes to do your BAS and tax, and you trust them to be up on all the current rules and regulations to minimise your tax
  • You're paying a premium for the time it takes them to stay on top of these rules and regulations
  • Suddenly you're paying for 2 services (the bookkeeper and the accountant) and a complicated accounting platform, with a flakey integration to your bank account that only does half the job
  • Now you have even less time than you did to start with

The real problem isn't the complexity of managing your finances. 

It's not the sheer volume of things that need to be done. 

It's not even the individual tools you need to tack together to make it all work.

You're intelligent enough to do it all.

But you just don't have the time.

And that, right there, is the actual problem. 

Time... 

And now you have less of it because you're managing 2 more people and dealing with a bank account integrated with a clunky piece of software that was only ever designed to save the accountant time, not you!

Let me say this... 

It's not your fault. 

You're not doing it wrong. 

You've just been using the only tools and services available as best you can. 

We all have.

There's nothing wrong with any of these tools or services individually. 

It's the system that's failed business owners. Hacked together and mandated as a functional requirement to save the accountants time, with little thought or care about how much time it takes the small business owners to operate.

What makes Thriday different? 

We started, right from the beginning, with a very different approach.

Rather than ask the accountants about their challenges, we started with the small business owners.

We asked them this: 

'What's the single biggest challenge you face when it comes to managing your business finances? '

Here's what they told us :

"I fear my income tax liabilities simply because I don't know what it will be.​"

"Categorising business expenses in MYOB (no idea what 95% of those category names mean!)."

"Time. And knowledge. The other aspects of business are fun. Finances are not!​"

"Invoices being swallowed in a sea of email.​"

"I have trouble keeping track of income and expenses in general.​"

"Making sure receipts/data are added to Xero each week. Otherwise, it's a pain to look back and correctly add everything.​"

"It's very time-consuming to keep on top of my finances, and I'm not sure I'm making the best use of my resources."

"Calculating my GST on my invoice. It's a pain in the butt."

"The cost of accounting and bookkeeping Services. I'm always looking to reduce the effort and cost to do this"

Once we understood their challenges, we asked them this:

'If you could have one wish to make your life easier when it comes to managing financial admin for your business, what would it be?​'

And they answered:

"Have it all automated into a simple, easy one-off software"

"Have a bank account that simplifies - from the number of accounts to reports, to support, to advice, to loan options - all tailored specifically to our business."

"Having an app or software to keep me organised. Be a bookkeeper, account, and bank all in one.​"

"Intuitive software - easy to use and understand, enjoyable to look at, with everything related to finance in one place, saving me time and headaches.​"

"Real-time integration between invoicing, payments, tax reporting and bank balances - preferably all in one place"

"Simplifying the process of repeatable tasks so that a lot of it happens in the background - for example, if a system could scrape my emails, attach invoices and prepare them for reconciliation, that would save 10-15 hours a week.​"

"To have a software that does it all for you with one-touch or AI do it for you."

"An all-in-one service which can integrate all of my devices in it, and keep track of everything in real-time that has all my data in the cloud so I can access it anywhere."

"Join the simple dots, design it for use by a real person, not an accountant. Keep everything together in a single spot."

So, that's what we built… 

Combining business transaction accounts, quoting, invoicing, bookkeeping, accounting and tax into a single app that you can use on your phone and your computer, what used to take 6 hours a week for some businesses, can now be done in just 35 minutes. 

What could you do with an extra ~5 hours each week? 

Maybe more time to work on your business? 

More time to connect with family and friends?

More time to spend on you? 

Imagine that...

We believe we've built something incredible that will have a real impact on people's lives.

A financial management platform for small businesses might not sound that exciting, but when you look deeper and see what that can actually do for people, we think it's super-exciting.

So that's the story. Let me finish up with these thoughts...

If you feel like you're wasting your time just to save your account time...

If you're sick of tools that only do half the job...

If you'd like to be able to manage your financial admin, quickly and easily, from one place...

If you like the idea of software that works for you rather than working for it...

If you believe that automating tedious, repetitive tasks and replacing expensive services with innovative technology designed to actually save time is a good idea...

Then try Thriday; we'd love to help you!

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